A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [126]
Anand was impressed.
‘Now, look,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘See this matchbox. You see me holding it in my hand. Oops! It fall down. Why?’
‘You leggo, that’s why.’
‘Not that at all. It fall down because of gravity. The law of gravity. They not teaching you children anything at all these days.’
He talked to Anand about people called Coppernickus and Galilyo. And it gave him a thrill to be the first to inform Anand that the world was round and moved about the sun.
‘Remember Galilyo. Always stick up for yourself.’
He was glad that Anand was interested. It was the week before Christmas and he was fearing the result of Seth’s visit.
He told Anand, On Saturday we are going to make a compass.’
And on Saturday Seth said, ‘Why you don’t come home, Anand boy? Come home and hang up your stocking. What you doing here with your father?’
‘He is not my father. It just look to you that he is my father.’
Seth evaded the theological issue. ‘They going to make cake and icecream, boy.’
Mr Biswas said, ‘Remember Galilyo.’
Anand stayed.
Using the batteries of his electric torch Mr Biswas magnetized a needle and stuck it on a disc of paper; in the centre of the disc he inserted a cap of paper and rested the cap on the head of a pin.
‘Where the eye of the needle points, that is north.’
They played with that until the needle lost its magnetism.
Sometimes Mr Biswas said he had ague. Then, wrapped up tightly and shivering, he made Anand recite Hindi hymns after him. And at these times, though nothing was said, Anand became affected by his father’s fear and repeated the hymns like charms. The barrackroom, its door and window closed, its edges in darkness, became cavernous and full of menace, and Anand longed for morning.
But there were compensations.
‘Today,’ Mr Biswas said, ‘I am going to show you something about a thing called centrifugal force. Go and get the bucket outside and full it up so high with water.’
Anand brought the water.
‘Not enough space here really,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘Why you don’t go outside?’
Mr Biswas didn’t listen. ‘Got to give it a good swing.’ He swung.
The water splashed on the bed, the walls, the floor.
‘The bucket was too heavy. Go and get one of the small blue pots from the kitchen. Full that with some water.’
And the second time it worked.
They made an electric buzzer, using the torch batteries, a piece of tin and a nail, a rusty new nail, one of those Mr Maclean had brought in newspaper on the afternoon Edgar had brushed the site for the house.
There were many reasons why Mr Biswas moved from the barracks to the finished room of his house. It was a positive action; it was a confident, defiant gesture; there was his continuing unease at hearing people moving about the barracks. And there was his hope that living in a new house in the new year might bring about a new state of mind. He would not have moved if he had been alone, for he feared solitude more than people. But, with Anand, he had enough company.
Tarzan found a pregnant cat in possession of the empty, dusty room and chased her out.
The room was swept and cleaned. They tried to scrape the asphalt snakes off the floor; but the asphalt, which melted so easily on the corrugated iron, remained hard on the cedar boards. The room was smaller than the barrackroom; the bed, Shama’s dressingtable, the green table, the kitchen safe and the rockingchair nearly filled it. ‘Got to be careful now,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Can’t rock too hard.’ And there were other inconveniences. There was no kitchen; they had to cook on boxes downstairs, below the room; they both got nausea. The roof had no gutters and water had to be fetched all the way from the barrack barrels. They also had to use the barrack latrine.
And every day Mr Biswas saw the snakes, thin, black, lengthening.
The incompleteness of the house didn’t depress him. He saw the rafters, the old corrugated iron, the grey uprights, the cracked boards on the floor and walls, the door to the non-existent